Director Sara Joyce discusses The Beacon, Nancy Harris’ West Cork family murder mystery, which receives its Cork premiere in an EVERYMAN MADE production this July.
‘Directing The Beacon’ by Sara Joyce
“Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.” – Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
I spent January this year on Inisheer, one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. So, when I read The Beacon for the first time, the world of the play had a particular resonance.
There were stunningly clear days when it was indeterminable where the sea became the sky – I’ve never seen so many stars at night. But no day was the same: one moment you might be bathed in a kaleidoscope of pink, orange, red; the next, bluey grey darkness was inescapable. Some moments were sheer magic. Some were devastating loneliness.
We meet five people in The Beacon, but there are six characters. The West Cork island on which it is set is omnipresent and ever changing. It is a sanctuary and a prison. When I spoke to Nancy about this production, it was clear how vital the setting is. To make a production in Cork, set in Cork, for a Cork audience is exhilarating and an utter privilege. The company has embraced the specificity and magic of the play’s setting, and my hope is that this production feels imbued with the ferocious majesty of West Cork.
The writing of The Beacon is masterful. There are plays a director dreams of directing: iconic texts by Tennessee Williams, Euripides, Sam Shephard, Henrick Ibsen. Nancy Harris’ The Beacon is part of a canon that will outlive the moment it was written because even though the world changes at a terrifying pace, the truth is that people do not. Each character in the play is wonderfully complicated. The plot is thrilling yes, but it is the relationships between these people that makes the story achingly familiar. Their yearning to understand, to be understood and the way in which they try just that, makes for dynamics as dramatic and changeable as the weather on the island.
The legacy of The Everyman as a pioneer for Irish storytelling makes it a particularly special theatre to be working in. I feel exceptionally lucky to be part of this next era in Des Kennedy’s inaugural season. There is a wonderfully creative, refreshingly funny and brilliantly dedicated team beyond the faces and names on the poster who are all part of the fabric of this production of The Beacon. If you don’t enjoy it, it was because of one of them. If you love it, it was all me!
The Beacon by Nancy Harris
Written by prolific BAFTA-nominated playwright and screenwriter, Nancy Harris (The Dry), The Beacon is a thrilling and darkly funny family drama that asks can we ever really know the truth of a thing – a person, a place or a work of art? And if we could, would we want to?
First commissioned by Druid in 2019, and recently produced by the Irish Rep in New York, The Everyman is proud to produce this major new revival for its long-awaited Cork premiere.
